Friday, August 10, 2012

Zambia - Longing for the Good Ol' Days of Colonialism

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100175001/zambian-miners-crush-a-chinese-manager-to-death-remember-that-when-beijing-boasts-about-its-win-win-african-parternships/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-age-of-the-dragon-china-s-conquest-of-africa-a-484603.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/world/africa/21zambia.html?pagewanted=all


Could it be that our Leftist professors in American and Western European Universities got it that wrong?

Out of all the evils that make up Western Civilization, Colonialism trumps racism as the favored target for those who pull the strings in the halls of Academia. The Western world was greedy, violent, and skimmed off the resources of undeveloped  nations and then skipped town after WWII. If the Colonizers had never provided modern weapons to people of these regions, they would be living in harmony with each other as we speak. There was not one single good thing that resulted from this system. If the people of these regions had been left to their own devices, and maybe were kindly offered a bit of free advice and a smidgen of material help to prime the pump, they would have had the chance to use these resources to develop their own economies and put them at least on a par with those of the Western World.

-That's the way the story goes. That is why Western nations have to accept crushing amounts of immigrants - they have to pay for the sins of their fathers.

It turns out that the Western powers may not have been so bad after all, relatively speaking. China has been heavily involved in mining operations in Africa for some time. They have a very businesslike approach, they agree to build roads and other infrastructure projects, and employ citizens of African nations in resource extraction. The Chinese in turn get to send the mined products, such as zinc copper, uranium, gold nickel and tin, etc., back to China to be processed and used to make finished products. As expected, the guys who can make the resource extraction happen make more money on the deal than those who cannot.

Oh, the horror.

In all fairness, if nations like Zambia felt that they could effectively remove the ore and sell it themselves, they would never have made deal with China. This is a business transaction, it did not have to happen. China needs raw materials, and they brokered a deal with certain countries in order to obtain them.

But, being fair, we must also look at the other side of the coin.

Working conditions in many of these mines make American coal mines look like a paid day off at a wellness spa. They are unnecessarily dangerous, accidents that have resulted in deaths have been covered up, and the Chinese supervisors are definitely no better than the old Western Colonizers. Africans have expressed resentment that they are not being employed in skilled jobs in building the roads and other projects that were part of the deal. Textile mills have been closed, and cotton is shipped out once the seeds have been separated from the fiber.*(At bottom)

Recently, the anger got a little out of hand-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100175001/zambian-miners-crush-a-chinese-manager-to-death-remember-that-when-beijing-boasts-about-its-win-win-african-parternships/


"Suppose a manager of a British mining company picked up a gun and opened fire on his African workforce? What if the company concerned paid its Zambian miners less than the legal minimum wage? Suppose relations on the shop floor became so poisonous that furious workers chose to crush a manager to death?

If a British-based mining house like Anglo American or Rio Tinto had experienced any of this, I strongly suspect that popular protest would have overwhelmed the company concerned, sending its share price into free-fall and casting its very future into doubt."

Yet all of the above has happened at a Chinese-owned mine in Zambia. When workers at Collum coal mine protested about poor wages and working conditions in 2010, their Chinese managers responded by opening fire with live rounds. In fairness, they were not shooting to kill: no one actually died, but 11 of the miners suffered bullet wounds.

"The Chinese argued they were acting in self defence, and Beijing made clear that should charges be pressed against them, bilateral relations would suffer. Zambia, unable to stand up to its biggest foreign investor, duly caved in: no criminal case was ever brought against the managers.

This year, protests at Collum have continued, spurred by the fact that its Chinese owners pay their employees less than the national minimum wage for shopworkers. On Saturday, the miners crushed a 50-year-old Chinese manager to death with a trolley.
[Cart]
But this has three consequences. First, the minerals that China extracts are always worth more than the infrastructure it builds. Put bluntly, Beijing always takes out more than it puts in (that is the whole point of the exercise). Second, the workforce that actually builds the roads, railways etc is often Chinese, so the number of jobs created is relatively small. Third, the skills needed to maintain this infrastructure are not always passed on, meaning that much of it will probably fall to bits a decade or two hence.

Finally – and most seriously of all in the case of Zambia – the Chinese are not always exemplary managers of the mines and oilfields they are handed control over. The reasons for this are interesting. The separation between workers and management that is always evident tends to be particularly wide in these cases. That’s for a simple reason: the Chinese managers and their African workers generally have no language in common. Meanwhile, the Africans cannot help noticing that no Chinese ever has an African boss. There is clearly a glass ceiling above which local employees will not rise. That’s before we comes to matters like health and safety, working conditions and wages.

I would hazard a guess that, in general, many Africans would prefer to work for established Western mining companies. That is certainly the view of Michael Sata, the Zambian president who won power largely because of widespread unease over the consequences of Chinese investment."

Sata had made such a remark back in 2007:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-age-of-the-dragon-china-s-conquest-of-africa-a-484603.html

"If there is one issue which Sata uses to mobilize the masses, it is the Chinese. He has warned voters that they plan to export their dictatorship to Africa, colonize the continent and introduce large-scale exploitation. Unlike Western investors, says Sata, the Chinese have little interest in the Africans' well-being.
The politician quickly talks himself into a rage. Chinese have little interest in human rights, he says. They are only interested in exploiting Africa's natural resources, which they have carted off using their own workers and equipment, and without having paid a single kwacha in taxes. Sata sums up his position as follows: "We want the Chinese to leave and the old colonial rulers to return. They exploited our natural resources too, but at least they took care of us. They built schools, taught us their language and brought us the British civilization."


That must be enough to make a Leftist professor squirm.

-On the safety issues in the mines:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-age-of-the-dragon-china-s-conquest-of-africa-a-484603.html

"Thomas Mumba died on April 20, 2005 when an explosives depot blew up in the Chambeshi copper mine. He had just turned 23 and had been working in the mine for two years. To this day, no one knows how many people died that day, because the mine's Chinese owners attempted to cover up what they knew about the accident. Besides, they had kept no records of who was working near the explosion site on the day of the accident.

According to the memorial plaque, there were 46 victims, but it could just as easily have been 50 or 60. Only fragments of the remains of most of the dead were recovered. Mukuka Chilufya, the engineer who managed the rescue team, says that his men filled 49 sacks with body parts that day. The Chinese have deflected all inquiries about the explosion."




"It said miners had to work 12-hour shifts often in fume-filled tunnels. Sometimes shifts were 18 hours long.

Zambian law limits shifts to eight hours.
Continue reading the main story

"They just consider production, not safety. If someone dies, he can be replaced tomorrow. And if you report the problem, you'll lose your job.”Zambian copper miner

The report said that despite improvements in recent years, safety and labour conditions at Chinese mines were worse than at other foreign-owned mines.

The state-owned China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Corporation (CNM) runs four copper mines in Zambia.

In its response to the report, CNM said "language and cultural differences" could have resulted in "misunderstandings".

"China's significant investment in Zambia's copper mining industry can benefit both Chinese and Zambians," said Daniel Bekele, the Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

"But the miners in Chinese-run companies have been subject to abusive health, safety and labour conditions and longtime [Zambian] government indifference."

Many of the poor safety practices in Zambia's Chinese-run mines were strikingly similar to abuses at mines in China, he added."



For all the bad press that the Western World has and continues to receive about Colonialism, we can at least submit with confidence that, if Western corporations had been operating these mines today, they would not dare run the mines as poorly as have the Chinese. The attacks on Western Colonialism are leveled at a 19th century society, not the Western world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.The problem is that the faults, themselves being debatable as far as the severity goes, of that older society that is long gone has for too long been applied to ours. 

Chinese society is an Eastern culture. The Han in particular have a strong sense of superiority. There is little to no concern for the good of the consumer or the people of a foreign nation. Non-Chinese are not the only ones who have been victimized by poisoned gypsum building material, killer pet food or milk for people,  lead-based paint in toys, or other neat corner-cutting. Even Chinese people have been sickened by illegal additives in food products. 

When the Malaysian government complained to China about poisonous food additives, the Chinese responded back with the message that they desired to meet over this and that they had a proposal that would work for both parties. The Malaysians were overjoyed at this rapid and apparently gracious response and immediately scheduled a meeting with their Chinese counterparts. At  the meeting, the Chinese official presented his proposal.

-That Malaysia relax its standards.

A Westerner would lose his mind at such an insult to his intelligence and the of waste his time. "Let me get this straight, I contact you about a problem, you tell me that we can meet and straighten this out. When we finally meet, you suggest that we make it easier for you to sicken our people. Get the Hell out of my office!"

The Chinese representative would probably wonder why the Westerner got so upset.

That is what the Zambians and other Africans have brought upon themselves.

* On the closure of textile factories.






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